


Rhapsody on a Windy Night

by wishwellingtons



Category: The Thick of It (TV)
Genre: M/M, References to the IRA, Short, Swearing, Tumblr Ask Box Fic, gratuitous reference to the Specials, post-series 4, references to the Troubles
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-11-16
Updated: 2014-11-16
Packaged: 2018-02-25 15:58:02
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/2627603
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/wishwellingtons/pseuds/wishwellingtons
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Jamie's drunk and happy about it. Malcolm's awake and not.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Rhapsody on a Windy Night

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Jexxer](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Jexxer/gifts).



> Another short, tumblr-inspired fic which I found and thought I should keep safe on here! I hope you enjoy it if you haven't seen it before.

It’s a wonderful thing to sing maudlin Scottish fight songs at three o’clock in the morning, particularly if your earliest childhood memories were filtered through a procession of stepdas some of whom had Irish origins if not passports (it was as well Jamie’d never quite grasped his early proximity to some paid-up members of the IRA), and thus your repertoire has become saturated not merely with tuneful ditties on Flodden, but sodden with green-edged, beer-goggled odes to the young lad who’s died for the green turf or intends to do so shortly. It’s a wonderful thing to segue recklessly from one type of sectarian love-drone to the other, swinging your way between lampposts and serenading to the empty night either the fair Janet who wouldn’t marry the English bastard or the dead of Ballywotsit or the dead of Loch Lomond or some endless variation on the theme of Shit Protestant King who Comes Over The Water and gets thoroughly thrashed by his phlegmatic Catholic counterpart with five thousand knights and a massive papal schlong, hurrah for the Jacobites and the Virgin Mary as well. 

 

 

Jamie loved to sing. To sing and to conduct himself, and also to raise both arms well above his head, communing with the stars and the lamppost and the security lights of the outraged neighbours. Fucksake, they weren’t _his_ neighbours. They were anti-Jacobite fascist BASTARDS but it was as well not to say as much (in fact, Jamie’d been both speaking and singing without decipherable consonants ever since leaving the tube, but he didn’t know that, his mouth was mostly numb) because they were Malc’s neighbours.

 

 

 

Ah, Malc. And there he was. Like everyone’s wee dead grandad in his dressing gown, a big scowl on his beautiful emaciated skull of a face. Jamie’d fucking loved that skull for, for thirty years, loved it the day he’d looked all fucking suspicious up by the altar with that posh bitch English _bitch_ (a day on which, sotto waistcoat, Jamie’d been quietly and incrementally scarcely less drunk than he was now). Loved it now, when it was snarling in an outraged horrified whisper about fucking house prices (what did it matter. All rich now, delicious compensation, eat it all for breakfast, castle Malc, room for everyone, turn the garden into pig, Labour widnae give a pub man’s prolapse anyway, they were too fucking glad tae get him back) and ASBOs (Jamie knew a song about those) and crushing Jamie’s bollocks in the sliding doors of parliamentary socialism (Jamie opined loudly that if ANYONE enjoyed a bit of their bits getting crushed, it’d be Malc, only it turned into a belch halfway through). Jamie leaned against the door until it turned into air, righted himself with a warm hand on wallpaper, and grinned at Malcolm like a special needs rainbow.

 

 

 

"I fucking love you." He was glowing. Malcolm was very slightly swaying, in between his own skin and that of a previously-unsuspected identical twin, which made Jamie shut his eyes and shake his head a few times. When he refocused, he noticed that Malcolm was not merely furious, but, but  _wakeful_. What little hair the cadaverous git miraculously retained (Jamie was proud of his continued full complement of hedge) hadn’t done its usual nocturnal trick of impersonating the ghost of a horse. And he didn’t have his usual _sleepus interruptus_ scowl where every bit of eyeball-to-sclera seemed - temporarily - to have been replaced by blood.

 

 

 

He was wearing his dressing gown but his pyjamas (especially when Jamie pressed his palm to his right eye for better squinty studying of them) looked suspiciously uncreased. Malc didnae really sleep, not sleep like Jamie (nobody slept like Jamie, i.e. naked, clothed, supine, perpendicular, snoring, deathlike, in the claustrophobic silence of a seminary attic or in a packed railway carriage on its way to Wembley); if Jamie fucked him (WHEN, glorious when) he  _passed out_ for about six hours but that was mainly exertion, puir auld fucker, and the revelatory power of Jamie’s cock, but thanks to Jamie’s concentrated love and lavish domestication (Malcolm would have queried this), Hamish Macdeath (those Tory bastards were unfit to even parody his name, but sometimes in his private thoughts, Jamie repeated that one to himself and giggled) was now at least acquainted with the basic principle of telling the world to fuck off and do one between the hours of two and five. Jamie vaguely remembered betting his (crap) watch on the outcome of a pool game, so he couldn’t be sure whether they were in the witching hour, but from the precise shade of grey along Malc’s jawline, it seemed likely.

 

 

 

"Worramarra?" 

 

 

 

Malcolm snarled. “Apart from an incontinent rough sleeper giving a one man Sinn Fein concert on my doorstep? Fucking everything over with my neighbours?”

 

 

 

"Ach, away with - shit," Jamie yawned, dismissing Malcolm’s more frightening rhetoric with a lazy gesture just as he had been doing for  _the past thirty years_ (and it  _never_ , to Malcolm, got any less frightening). “All ball-scratching jessies. Matter, what’s the. Wi’ you.” 

 

 

 

Malcolm shot him the kind of look that could curdle kidneys and bottle your pancreas. “This press conference’s going to go fucking fabulously, isn’t it? When I’ve been awake all night so far wondering where the _fuck_ you are and - and doubtless I’m going to spend the rest of the night fielding calls from every outraged householder on the avenue.” He was, infuriatingly, aware that Jamie’d stopped listening.

 

 

 

"Y’knew where I was, Malc, whisht," He dropped onto the bottom of the staircase to a semi-audible cracking of floorboards, and began to pull off his boots. 

 

 

 

"Where?" 

 

 

 

"God, the Castle, the Three and Six, the fucking Queen’s… the one on the street, Malc, you know, with a tree, christ, Frankie’s wee mate wi’ no eye,  _christ_ , all right, I dinnae remember the  _names_ but y’get the general impression. Sit on m’knee.” 

 

 

 

Jamie found it poignant that he was probably too drunk to retain any  _lasting_ impression of the way his big fastidious jessie had stepped back and clutched his dressing gown like a Victorian virgin with her skirts.  "Oh, bollocks, Malc, you’re working yourself the  _fuck up_ about this press conference, and all because - fuck -  _everyone_ 's been to prison.”

 

 

 

"Not everyone," Malcolm spat, eyebrows in his hairline and still retreating a fraction with every syllable. "Not  _fucking_ everyone.”

 

 

 

"Most," he countered, unconcerned, accomplishing the boots, and starting to pull off his socks. Then his coat. "Stephen Fry. Oscar Wilde. Lots of poofs actually, that poor sod who grew tits and offed himself with an apple - " Malcolm tried hard not to  _visibly reel at this,_ did knowledge walk through walls to find Jamie, or had he started _reading_? The next was no more reassuring, ” - Brendan, oor Gavin, oor Caillen, Caillen Jr, Brendan’s da, Aunty Mary - “ 

 

 

 

"Christ." Malcolm rubbed the back of his neck, and tried to ignore that Jamie was now pulling his shirt off, and then tried and failed not to instantly scrutinise his bare skin for marks from nails, teeth or lips. Even in peripheral vision this was about as subtle as an avalanche. Jamie grinned. He swaggered across like a prizewinner, and not like a terrible drunk who stank of booze. 

 

 

 

"Malc,  _nobody gives a fuck_ that you were put away. It’s historical fucking record that the load of it was bollocks. Once you got yourself such a _superlative_ character witness.” Malcolm refuted this with elaborate eloquence, and also sagged very slightly into Jamie’s arms. Jamie’d flattened himself against Malcolm and was now nuzzling at his neck. Malcolm would vote UKIP if not  _Lib Dem_ before he’d rest a hand on that bare back. Jamie kissed his jaw. “They’re shit scared of you. Rumour has it you learned to use a shiv in prison.”

 

 

 

"Rumour." He felt Jamie’s grinning teeth. 

 

 

 

"Me. Everyone’s terrified of you." He was kneading Malcolm’s arms now, thin bloodless streaks of hate that they were, and his voice rose in pride. “‘cept me."

 

 

 

Malcolm exhaled, closed his eyes, tried not to think about the wallpaper. “Except you.”

 

 

 

"I know too much." Jamie ran a hand up Malcolm’s arm and - with dexterity - finger-walked across knotted shoulders to a certain place bunched at the back of Malcolm’s neck. Then he pressed. "Like how to do this."

 

 

 

Malcolm’s head knocked forward onto Jamie’s shoulder and he was instantly several times heavier, even though the long exhausted hiss from his throat suggested he was slowly deflating. A smirking Jamie continued to kiss at his ear and throat, hugging him closer in armfuls of bony, unbalanced insanity. His free hand was still working at the base of Malcolm’s skull.

 

 

 

"You fucking idiot. You’ll be a knockout. Come on, sweetheart, s’bed and you’ll show me in the morning. Let the bastards know you’re back." Malcolm felt as if he were melting, into heat generated by a combination of irritation and endless warm skin.

 

 

 

"You smell," he grumbled, as Jamie did  _things_ to his spine and other  _things_ (he would die if he lost Jamie again. He had given up resisting that one. He had also given up resisting what he dizzily termed  _all this_ ) with his nuzzling, treacherous, slum brat nose, “like a pissup in a fucking brewery. Or a - “

 

 

 

" - bumrape in a barracks?" Jamie supplied, cheerfully hauling his grumpy collection of bones towards the stairs. He smirked, looking for all the world like London’s happiest graverobber. " _Au contraire_.”


End file.
